![]() In this spirit, Jean Monnet became the advocate of a new morality, relying on people and their capacity to make progress by drawing lessons from the most painful experiences they had been through. His ambition was to break this vicious circle and to establish amongst the states the same relations founded on equality and arbitration that governed relations between individuals in democratic societies. On our continent war had followed war, creating a fatal cycle in which the victory of some led to the desire of revenge among others. Monnet was one of the first to understand and explain that the principle of European unification basically involves the search for a new humanism. They tackled the source of conflict at its root. ![]() Monnet attached great importance to the moral and human aspects of the European idea, captured in the Schuman plan by the denunciation of the spirit of supremacy and discriminatory practices which had created complexes and ill-feelings between nations on our continent. Monnet realised early that, acting alone, 'the nations of Europe are too circumscribed to give their people the prosperity made possible and hence necessary by modern conditions'. ![]() The clarity and the strength of Monnet's vision has proven its worth because it has endured and because, even as we face the challenges of globalisation, that vision still holds true resonance today, rooted as it was and is in humanitarian values and supranational engagement. This marked them out as a special generation among all the European generations that had gone before. One thinks in particular of Monnet and the early generation of founders of the idea of modern European integration, who rose above the ashes of the Second World War, who were prepared to see hope at a time when there was only despair, to see opportunity when there was economic breakdown, and to see in the European project an ideal of reconciliation with opportunity and prosperity. They were not people who became lost in the petty detail: they rose above the detail. I would like today to celebrate these two leaders of vision whose own leadership showed the will, political determination and capacity to think long, wide and big. We mark the 20th anniversary today of the adoption by this European Parliament of the first draft Constitutional Treaty for the European Union and the 25th anniversary of the death of Jean Monnet. Among them were two people: Jean Monnet and Altiero Spinelli, whom we commemorate here today. In western Europe after the Second World War a number of people had the courage to look at the big picture. ![]() The next item is the commemoration of Jean Monnet and the twentieth anniversary of the draft Treaty establishing the European Union (1984 – Rapporteur: Altiero Spinelli).Ĭolleagues, members of the European Commission and Council, welcome to this special session of commemoration. Tribute to Jean Monnet and commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the draft Treaty establishing the European Union (1984 – Rapporteur: Altiero Spinelli) One-minute speeches on matters of political importanceġ.
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